See Ya, Helen!

Fine with me. I always found her obnoxious, abrasive, partisan, rude, and mean-spirited.

But don’t count her out just yet. She previously resigned from UPI in 2000 but had a new gig at Hearst Newspapers within a few months, so we may see her again.

Though she is gone (at least for now), the question remains: Was what she said in the video clip anti-Semitic or merely anti-Zionist?

In the combox of my previous post, many commenters disagreed with me and said that the clip did provide proof of Thomas’s anti-Semitism.

That’s fine. I don’t have a problem with disagreement.

Other commenters agreed that the video didn’t provide proof of anti-Semitism and said that I was right to distinguish anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism.

That’s fine, too. I also don’t have a problem with people agreeing.

Even though Thomas has resigned, the issues involved in the exchange are still with us—and will be in the future—and that makes them still worth talking about. So I’d like to explore them a little further.

Specifically, I’d like to evaluate the following claims by critics:

1) That wishing a group of people would leave a particular land automatically constitutes racism

2) That the Jewish people have legitimate title to the land of Israel

These issues were not created by Helen Thomas. They have been with us for a long time, and they will be with us for a long time in the future. I can’t treat them in a single post, but let’s tackle the racism charge in this one.

Some commenters suggested that “Go home!” is the unmistakable cry of the racist, and at first glance, this seems plausible. But does this claim hold up to careful consideration?

It certainly doesn’t apply to all racists. Some racists don’t want those against whom they are prejudiced to leave at all. The runaway slave laws that used to exist in America are proof of that.

But what about the reverse? If you do want a group of people to leave, does that automatically make you a racist?

As is often the case, a matter of principle like this can be demonstrated by changing the scale of the problem. Suppose that we aren’t talking about a whole nation full of people, like Israel, laying claim to a particular territory. Suppose it’s just one person and a much smaller territory.

Specifically: suppose that you are in your house and one night someone breaks in. Further suppose that you are a member of race X and the home invader is a member of race Y. You naturally want the person to leave. But—and here is the key question—why do you want him to leave?

Is it because of his race? Because you don’t like race Y as a whole and don’t want its members around? If so then you are a racist with regard to race Y. No doubt about it.

But the reason you want the person to leave may have nothing to do with the home invader’s race. You may want him to go because you don’t want people invading your home. In that case, your motive is not racism but anti-home-invasion-ism.

Now let’s scale the issue up to where groups of people large enough to control national territories are in play.

Suppose, that you are a citizen of Vichy France and the Nazis have rolled in on their tanks and taken control.

If you want the Germans to leave, are you a racist?

It depends. If you hate all Germans and want them to leave simply because of that fact, then yes, you are an anti-German racist. (Be sure to remember that the word “race” originally applied not just to skin color but to national/ethnic/cultural origin, as in “the German race,” “the British race,” “the Japanese race,” etc.)

If you want Germans out because they are Germans, then yes, you are a racist.

But if you want them out because you don’t like people occupying your homeland—and if you would object whether they were German or British or Japanese—then you are not a racist. You are an anti-occupationist.

In the same way, if it’s 1800 and you are a Native American and you don’t like people of European descent—British, Spanish, or Portugese—occupying your homeland then you are a racist if you hate all British, all Spanish, or all Portugese—even the ones who aren’t occupying your homeland; but you are not a racist if you just hate foreign occupiers.

Or if it’s A.D. 60 and you are a Jewish person in Jerusalem, you may well hate the Romans occupying Judea and Galilee. If you hate all Romans everywhere, then you are an anti-Roman racist. But if you don’t mind Romans that aren’t supporters of the occupation then you are just an anti-occupationist.

They key is whether you want someone to leave because they are an occupier (of whatever race) or whether you want them to leave because they are of a specific race, apart from the occupation issue.

It should be pointed out that hating occupiers and lead to racism.

* If you are a Jew in second century B.C. Judea and you hate the Greek occupiers, you may be led to hate all Greeks.
* If you are a Jew in first century A.D. Judea and you hate the Roman occupiers, you may be led to hate all Romans.
* If you are a Native American in the nineteenth century A.D. Americas, you hate the European occupiers, you may be led to hate all Europeans.
* If you are a twentieth century Frenchman and you hate the German occupiers, you may be led to hate all Germans.
* If you are a twentieth century Palestinian and you hate the Jewish occupiers, you may be led to hate all Jews.

If so, your hatred of occupiers has led you into racism.

But just because occupation can lead one into racism doesn’t mean that it always does lead one into racism.

Should we assume that Maria von Trapp became an anti-German racist just because the Nazis perpetrated the Anschluss and seized control of Austria?

This seems implausible.

We can’t just assume racism on the part of a person who opposes a particular occupation. We can’t just leap to conclusions. We must strive to be fair and accurate about others, even if we don’t like them.

Specifically, we need to watch out for potential offenses against the Eighth Commandment (“Thou shalt not bear false witness against they neighbor”; Exodus 20:16). One commits calumny who “by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them”; also, if on the basis of an emotional reaction one leaps to an unwarranted conclusion, one commits the sin of rash judgment who “even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2477).

I understand how easy it is to get caught up with emotion when one encounters the kind of venom that Thomas displayed in her recent remarks (even chuckling—or as some have said, cackling—at her own provocation). That’s human. But it is at precisely such times that we have to check ourselves and make sure we are not being misled by our emotions (see above on rash judgment).

That’s why Scripture is full of exhortations like:

* “Reckon others better than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3)—i.e., give them the befit of the doubt

* “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12)—would you want to be given the benefit of the doubt, or to have people stop and check their emotions before lashing out at you?

* “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18, Mark 12:31)

These are part of the Jewish tradition as much as the Christian, as illustrated not just by the quote from Leviticus, but also by Hillel the Elder’s teaching a Gentile, “What is hateful to thee, do not unto thy fellow man: this is the whole Law; the rest is mere commentary” (Shab. 31a).

The ethical requirements of both Judaism and Christianity thus require us to be careful in this area and make sure that we are not being swept up by our emotions. But that’s not the only consideration here.

In America today, in the wake of the Jewish Holocaust in Nazi Germany, there are few more damning things that one can say against a person than that they are an anti-Semite.

The only things that compare with it are calling someone a racist, a sexist, or a pedophile.

But that’s changing . . . rapidly . . . because the word “racist” is loosing its punch. The word has been so over-used that its force is wearing off, just as “Help! Wolf!” lost its punch in the Boy Who Cried Wolf.

If you use an emotionally-charged term too often, when it isn’t clearly warranted, it will lose the charge it has. People will start rolling their eyes when you use it, and their sympathies will shift from those who make the accusation to those against whom it is made.

If you don’t want that to happen to the word “anti-Semitism” then you don’t want it over used.

So there is one more reason we should be careful when charging someone with anti-Semitism.

This applies especially to Helen Thomas when you look at the things she said in the video, because she specifically suggests that Israelis who immigrated from America should return to America.

America is Helen’s native country. It’s her own neighborhood. Her own back yard.

And by saying that Israelis who came from America should return to America, she’s saying, “Let’s have more Jews here!”

If she hated Jewish people in general and wanted them to “just go away” on that basis then she wouldn’t be inviting them here. She’d want them to all die or something—or move to Antarctica, or the moon. But none of those is what she says. She just wants them out of a particular plot of ground in the Middle East, and she’s happy to have those of American origin come back to America, where she lives.

That shows she’s anti-occupationist, but it does not show that she’s anti-Semitic.

You can argue that what’s going on in Israel isn’t an occupation. That goes to the issue of who has proper title to the land in question (the subject of an upcoming post). But Helen perceives it as an occupation, and that’s what she’s objecting to.

So at least from what we see in the video, Thomas is clearly an anti-Zionist, but if you want to charge her with anti-Semitism, you’ll need to provide additional evidence.

Comments

The slurs against Jimmy Akin’s intentions are ugly and unwarranted. Blech.

However, Jimmy, while everything you’ve said here is logical, and I agree the argumentum ad Hitlerum gets REALLY old, I think you’ve made a complete wrong turn by ignoring the history and context of Thomas’ remark. The Palestinian-Israeli dispute has rhetoric and slogans attached to it. The call for “Jews [to]go back to Poland and Germany” is a popular Hamas slogan, not unlike the Klan’s “White Power.”

Someone innocent of any knowledge of the Klan might well take the phrase innocently—isn’t a white person as entitled to pride in his culture as anyone else? If you know the history of the phrase, however, you will “hear” something entirely different, and in no way benign. The more so if you see it on a t-shirt on Martin Luther King’s birthday.

Ditto Helen Thomas’ words. It is certainly not anti-semitic in the abstract to take—let’s say—Bishop Chacour’s view of the politics of the region. But to say “let the Jews go back to Poland”—to a Rabbi and his kids, at an event celebrating Jewish heritage—was deliberately incendiary in precisely the fashion of a “White Power” tshirt on Jan. 18th. I agree completely with the commenter above that her addition of “...and America” was because she realized she’d gone too far.

To take a less incendiary rhetorical example, there are people who are in no way racists or defenders of slavery who in good faith believe in “states’ rights” and think the Confederacy had the better of the political argument during the Civil War. That is one thing. But a person who yells out “states’ rights!” during a black history month celebration is not engaging that argument, he’s playing racial provocateur and knows it full well. That’s what Helen Thomas was doing.

Posted by Patrick Barta on Wednesday, Jun 16, 2010 10:23 PM (EDT):

I sincerely thank you for bringing in the religion or quotes from religious sources. You have expertese. I appreciate it.

Posted by Sue on Tuesday, Jun 15, 2010 3:27 PM (EDT):

I am of Italian heritage. My mother came here in 1895 at age 10 with her family. My grandfather owned his own barbershop in the Bronx, they acclimated themselves to the U.S. When they arrived here, legally, people had to be innocculated and have a physical exam and if anyone was sick, they were sent back. My Dad came here in 1891 and went through the same process. They became citizens. They endured the Great Depression, WWI and WWII. They had an only son in WWII and at that time Italy was our enemy. Even though my Dad had family in Italy, the fact that they were now enemies was sad for him, as he had family there but both my parents brought us up to be proud Americans, as they were. I have absolutely no allegiance to Italy, never been there and most likely at my age, never will. So when people are born in this country, I do not understand their allegiance to another country. I have a copy of a newspaper clipping from Marilyn Vos Savant—-The question was “What internal situation do you feel poses the largest threat to the well-being of the U.S.?” Her answer: “Over the decades to come, I believe one of the greatest threats to the stability of the U.S. may well be the declining number of people who call themselves Americans. I wonder how long the hyphenation of nationalities can continue without bringing the hyphenation of loyalties. Whenever people ask me whether I am French-American, for example, it irritates me and I tell them: No. I was born in this country, I’m a citizen and I’m and American”. That is exactly how an American should feel. By the way my husband, as well as my brother, fought in WWII for our freedom. from: Proud American

Posted by Esther Haman on Tuesday, Jun 15, 2010 3:01 PM (EDT):

What is done to Helen Thomas goes to show you how our first amendment and freedom of speech is being endangered by the Zionists owned Media and News organizations. How the infiltration of the Zionists into our government is the most imminent danger to this country and our values.

The Zionists can block and defame anyone, demonize others and protect themselves from any damages or backlash from their atrocities. For example The “Goldstone” report by the UN is forgotten, the latest killing of unarmed and innocent people on the seas and other places are not followed up and no journalist dare to criticizes the Israelis or the Zionists.

Other peoples such as ourselves who blog and comment on daily news are being censored and taken out. The power to shape American public opinion is a power that is now controlled by the Zionists and they can shut down our freedom of expression and speech when they want to.

Wake up and see who is stealing your country from underneath you.

Posted by Jean on Sunday, Jun 13, 2010 3:38 PM (EDT):

See, people say it’s racism to want an established, nth-generation population out of an area, as opposed to an invading army. Well, and they’d have a point, except for one thing: the occupiers and the occupied have different legal status. If they were one people, under one law, with a merging culture, then there would be no reasonable way to frame such a demand. However, while the law distinguishes between Jews and Muslims, while a cultural divide is artificially maintained, there’s no shame in pushing back against it. If people want want to call racism, to claim that both groups are just people and differentiating between them is unacceptable, then they need to live up to that themselves, and knock down the group borders. Make one single secular state with no concept of Jew or Gentile, and hell yes, I fully support the right of all of them to occupy all of it. On the other hand, if they want to maintain a theocracy and an us/them divide, they have no right to complain when people want ‘them’ to get the hell out.

Posted by Dov Pollock on Sunday, Jun 13, 2010 1:26 PM (EDT):

“(Thomas’) parents were immigrants from Lebanon…She was born in 1920 and growing up as a girl and a young woman hundreds of thousands of Jewish people were immigrating to Palestine, with increasingly tense relations between them and the Palestinians. She was a grown woman—age 28—when Israel became an independent state, and subsequently has seen—and felt in a personal way—the subsequent history of pain and violence of the region, including in particular the horrors that have befallen Lebanon on account of its proximity to Israel.”

Akin explains in the above quote that being of Christian Lebanese extraction, one can understand Thomas’ antipathy toward the Jewish state and her desire to send the Jews “back” to places like Poland, because of the “horrors” that have befallen Lebanon because of Israel.

Of course, if you understood from the first blog that Thomas despises the Jewish state because of her Lebanese background, in the second blog Akin claims that Thomas is an American and her wishing for the Jews to “go back” (read: “forcibly transferred”) to not only Poland and Germany but also America, shows just how much she actually loves the Jews.

However, the real problem is not the convoluted illogic of Akin’s arguments, but his disturbing lack, as a Catholic apologist, of even a rudimentary knowledge of Catholic – Jewish relations when Jews did seek to return to Poland after the war as well as his apparent lack of knowledge of the history of Christians in Lebanon and their relationship to Israel.

Instead of his next blog, which will no doubt be titled along the lines of “I just can’t say good bye Helen”, perhaps Akin would write about the events of Jedwabne Poland or the events of July 4, 1946 in Kielce Poland or the events of August 11, 1945 in Krakow Poland to let everyone understand what exactly Thomas was saying about the Jews going home to Poland. The Jews that survived the Shoah in Poland, did try to go “home” and every person should be informed as to what happened.

As for Lebanon, we can start with the massacres of the Christians in Lebanon in the early 1860’s.I know it would be nice to blame Israel and the Jews, but the Jews weren’t the ones killing Christians and the Jews regained their independence from the many invaders to their homeland in 1948. However, the orphaned Christian children were brought to a Catholic convent, founded in 1861, in what is now the Ein kerem neighborhood of Jerusalem. The convent has an excellent relationship with the Jews of Israel.

Of course it’s extremely interesting that Akin claims that Thomas is so pro-Palestinian Arab as she is of Christian Lebanese extraction. The Palestinian Moslems attempted to wipe out the Christians of Southern Lebanon. I presume Akin has heard of the Damour massacre. I also presume he knows and understands that Lebanon is virtually occupied by Syria, a radical Moslem country that has never recognized Lebanese independence and has been the major contributing factor in turning Lebanon from a Christian country to a Moslem vassal state of Syria. So instead of writing blogs about a nasty journalist named Thomas, perhaps Akin could write a blog about the Catholic Lebanese American journalist by the name of Brigitte Gabriel.

When it comes to the Christians of Southern Lebanon the reason we are able to still write about them is because the IDF came to their rescue. Here I must admit to a certain amount of personal responsibility as I did 5 reserve tours giving physical protection and providing medical services to the Christians of Southern Lebanon in the first Israel – Lebanon war. As Akin explains, Thomas being Christian Lebanese, hates the Jewish state who rescued them and loves the Palestinian Arabs who tried to wipe the Lebanese Christians off the planet. Who would have thought?

Posted by Egbert F Bhatty on Saturday, Jun 12, 2010 2:22 PM (EDT):

Jimmy – Another brilliant post! Well-reasoned. And, reasonable! As were Helen Thomas’ words – the first [reasoned], not the second [reasonable]. A seasoned journalist, Helen Thomas could have deployed her words more skillfully.
But, no matter how astute your observations, Jimmy, they won’t satisfy the virulent philo-Semites among your readers. I have no problem with these philo-Semites.
I’m a philo-Semite myself. Jewish learning is unmatched; probably never will be matched. A constant source of delight! As well, I am a philo-Palestinian, -Arab, -Muslim. Having lived lo these 70 summers with and among Muslims in India, in England, and, here, in the US.
Despite my obvious philo-Semetic tendencies I am quite disgusted with the continued indiscriminate Israeli killings of unarmed [sticks and stones] Palestinians with the latest high-tech American military equipment, paid for by you and me. The killing of 9 civilians aboard the ship Rachel Corrie by the Israelis on June 1, which ship was carrying humanitarian aid to the Palestinians in Gaza, is barbaric.
This is what led to Helen Thomas’ outburst – that the Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine.” In the face of such Jewish provocation, quite understandable. Not anti-Semitic. Not even anti-Zionist. But, decidedly pro-Life. A position that any reasonable Catholic can support.

Posted by Mark P. Shea on Saturday, Jun 12, 2010 12:32 PM (EDT):

Akin views as legitimate not only the destruction of the Jewish state but making the area Judenrein.

And we have a winner in the Godwin’s Law Competition! He believes and said no such thing. Shame on you.

To paraphrase Andy Warhol, “In the future, everyone will be Adolf Hitler for 15 minutes.”

That post was an archetypal illustration of Jimmy’s point. When everybody is an anti-semite, nobody is.

Posted by Sue on Friday, Jun 11, 2010 9:48 PM (EDT):

Thank you ‘Franciscan’ for the info about Muslims. I read more about it on the internet. There are many ‘kinds’ or ‘denominations’ of Muslims as there are different denominations of Christians is what I got from it. Never too old to learn and that is why I like my computer so much.

Posted by Seamus on Friday, Jun 11, 2010 3:31 PM (EDT):

Before 1948 the people in Palestine- Jews, Christians, and Muslims, could live at most times in relative peace.

Well, yeah, if you ignore such little things as the pogroms in Hebron in 1929 and Tiberias in 1938.

Posted by Franciscan on Friday, Jun 11, 2010 2:47 PM (EDT):

Dov,
I can understand your reaction to an extent (assuming you’re Jewish especially) and I agree there are things Akin didn’t seem to cover or consider (like those at the top of the comments box). But this attempt to read his mind and heart is wrong. You jumped to some pretty damning conclusions without warrant. And that kind of argument isn’t likely to convince many people who are open to hearing.

I hope you never serve on a jury with that standard of evidence. If anything, I think you further reinforced the general point Akin was making in his first article. When we too easily jump to judge people with serious charges, we undermine the significance and power of those charges.

Sue,
I think I understand what you’re trying to get at, but no one is “Muslim by descent” and no one is “part Muslim.” Muslims are followers of the religion of Islam. Saying someone is “part Muslim” is like saying they are “part Catholic.” A person can be Arab, African, European or Asian by descent. But no one is Muslim, Catholic or Buddhist by descent.

Posted by liseux on Friday, Jun 11, 2010 2:03 PM (EDT):

Hello Dov Pollock,

Before 1948 the people in Palestine- Jews, Christians, and Muslims, could live at most times in relative peace. The Palistinian Christians have suffered much since 1948, and many of them can claim ancestral ties as long or longer than any Jewish people.

Peace will not come there until both sides learn to truly forgive.

The land of Palestine is for ALL people, not just the Jews. The Old Testament says that- and I will find the quote for you soon, if you care to have it.

I do not believe that Akin is in anyway an anti-Semite.

Please do not be so politically correct that one cannot point out the mistakes and errors of individuals without calling him a racist.

Posted by Sue on Friday, Jun 11, 2010 12:40 PM (EDT):

First: Jimmy, your analogy of someone breaking into your house in the middle of the night and you wanting them out because they are occupying your home, it brought to mind the illegal Mexicans who come into our country uninvited, and not all, but some, do havoc. As much as I feel sorry for these poor, hungry people, their country and church should take care of them, otherwise they are welcome here by coming in the proper way, not invading us. So their country and their church are the ones at fault, not the U.S.
Second: As to Helen Thomas, she is about to have her 90th birthday. I am 83 yrs old and I know that as you age, your body shrinks, outside and inside as does the brain. You either become a very quiet elderly person, or you become ‘verbal’ like Helen and myself. Elderly people can become very outspoken and I agree with Jimmy, that she is an anti-occupier but the fact that she is a Muslim by decent has a bit to do with it also. I shall also state at this time that because our President is also part Muslim, it has a lot to do with some of his decisions. Right or wrong, I don’t know, we shall see in time. I do feel that a person’s heritage and religion, has a great deal to do with their inner beliefs.

Posted by Dov Pollock on Friday, Jun 11, 2010 11:49 AM (EDT):

After Akin’s first blog about Helen Thomas, you may have presumed that he was just shooting off the cuff in his defense of her indefensible comments. You may also have presumed that in his rush to defend Thomas, he hadn’t really considered all the salient facts, hadn’t really reasoned it all out. However, though Thomas has apologized and gone, though the responses were overwhelmingly against him, Akin has returned to the subject. He does so not in defense of Helen Thomas whose defense at this point is superfluous. He does so not in defense of any Catholic doctrines as a Catholic apologist (the Vatican has full diplomatic relations with the Jewish state of Israel, which means they do not advocate wiping the Jewish state off the map and shipping the Jews out of the country).
It’s only after reading Akin’s second blog, that it is apparent that Akin wasn’t just defending Thomas, he was defending himself. Akin is essentially asking, if someone like myself believes that Israel is an illegitimate entity and that all her Jewish occupants should be shipped out, am I an anti-Semite?
At first glance at the second blog, I was tempted to bring up the tragedy of the ships the St. Louis and the Sturma. I thought I might ask about the quote “no Jews are too many Jews”, or the 1939 white paper for Palestine. I thought to discuss the first modern census of Jerusalem in 1840, which showed a large Jewish plurality, to ask whether Akin thought these people were there as “occupiers” or whether it just might have something to do with a three thousand year old connection to the place. However to do so would ignore the basic underlying viciousness and maliciousness of what is being advocated here. It’s not just Akin’s example of the Nazis and Vichy France (and guess who Akin sees as the Nazis in his example?) it is his claim to the legitimacy of the concepts of Judenrein and Judenfrei. In other words, Akin is arguing that no matter what the political settlement, the land of Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people, can and should be free of Jews and Jews should be prevented forever from living there.
Akin thinks it’s legitimate to argue to deny the Jewish people (and the Jewish people alone) the right of self- determination. Akin wishes to eradicate and ignore the three and a half thousand history of the Jewish people with the land of Israel. Akin paints the Jews in Israel as Nazi occupiers in Vichy France. Akin ignores how the world shut its borders to the Jews. Akin views as legitimate not only the destruction of the Jewish state but making the area Judenrein. Of course Akin would argue that he is not anti-Semitic just anti-Zionist. However, the question is, what is the difference?

Posted by Laya on Friday, Jun 11, 2010 12:13 AM (EDT):

I posted that in light of the Holocaust and Inquistion your present position is not a surprise coming from an official publication of the Cathlolic church.

Posted by Laya on Friday, Jun 11, 2010 12:12 AM (EDT):

I see you don’t publish comments that criticize the Church’s relationship with Jews….ahh well it was worth a try.

—-
If you’ve ever had to struggle in a Latin class, this scene is genius!

Posted by liseux on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 10:31 PM (EDT):

Yes, I should have been clearer. The bishop is indeed talking about land that was seized after 1948.

It was my guess that before 1948 the land was generally bought or negotiated for when the Jews immigrated to Palestine. After 1948 the Palestinian Christians lost their rights.

Many of them had been there since the time of Christ.

I do have sympathy for the Jews in Israel, but they have mistreated and abused the Palistinian Christians who wanted and do want peace.

God cannot be happy with the situation there.

Posted by Augustine on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 8:50 PM (EDT):

Liseux,

Just to be clearer, I mean the the bishop couldn’t be referring to Israeli law before 1948, since Israel didn’t exist before then.

Posted by Augustine on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 8:49 PM (EDT):

Liseux,

The good bishop seems to be referring to a time after 1948. In the preceding decades before the foundation of Israel, land was acquired and settled legally.

Your example just illustrates what I mean by the oppressive actions that the state of Israel has taken.

Mind you, Israel doesn’t give a rat about Christian populations or sites. It would rather bulldoze all the churches in Jerusalem for all they care. It’s not uncommon to see modern buildings encroaching on Christian ruins, when they’re not outright demolished for yet another Israeli settlement.

Posted by liseux on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 8:32 PM (EDT):

According to Catholic Bishop Elias Chacour in his book, his ancestral lands were taken away illegally. They even had the papers which demonstrated BY ISRAELI LAW that their lands were not to be confiscated.

When Chacour’s village elders presented this to the soldiers, they were threatened and nothing was ever done, despite repeated attempts appealing to Jerusalem authoritites.

I recommend the book Blood Brothers, by Elias Chacour, still Catholic biship in Galilee to see the Palistinian Christian side of this issue.

Israel is for ALL people, not just the Jews.

Posted by dante on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 8:23 PM (EDT):

By limiting the analysis to the two points, you obfuscate the true point - you argue by definitions. There is no concensus on what, exactly, constitutes racism - nor on what consitutes legitimate title. Your whole analysis is flawed because hatred is not a matter of definitions, but a matter of emotions. By discounting the import of suggesting to two yarmulke clad boys and a rabbi that the “Jews” should go back to Poland - then Poland and Germany, you discount the best evidence of what was in her heart. If a professional writer did not understand the connotations in that context to that audience (Jat ewish Heritage celebration to three religious Jews) the writer is either too senile or too hate-blinded to be trusted with any more professional writing duties. (I don’t think hate-blinded and senile are mutually exclusive, btw.)

Posted by Augustine on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 8:05 PM (EDT):

Lisieux,

Legally. Period.

It doesn’t mean that here and there it was criminally, which probably applies to both sides, but not in general.

Posted by liseux on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 7:49 PM (EDT):

I don’t dispute that Jews had been immigrating to Palestine for over 50 years or even beyond that time span.

But, tell, me Augustine, how did the Jews obtain their land from the Palestinians before the founding of the state of Israel?

Posted by Augustine on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 7:43 PM (EDT):

Lisieux,

That is not correct. Jews had been immigrating to Palestine for over 50 years before the founding of the state of Israel.

Yes, after the Israeli independence, the mutual resentment that had been simmering and that had flashed in some Palestinians collaborating with the Nazis, added with cold war super-powers interference, it did become an outright conflict and military force was used to displace the Palestinian population.

However, such actions are examples of what I was referring to as border-line genocide on the Israeli’s part. Truly, it got to the point that both sides fostered a mutual hatred that has escalated to racism with genocidal overtones.

Yet, one thing is to state that this should stop and illegal actions be reversed, quite another to state that either all Jews are booted out or all Palestinians corralled. The former is justice, the latter, racism.

And, yes, the state of Israel is an oppressive one and terrorism is not uncommon among the Palestinian people. BOTH attitudes are despicable.

Posted by liseux on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 7:33 PM (EDT):

But Augustine, it was precisely the occupation forces which allowed the settlers to come in. Without the occupying forces, the homes of the Palistinians could not have been taken.

It was often at gun-point that the Palestinian Christians were forced from their villages and KEPT from returning to their villages.

So, the settlers very often depended on the occupying forces to take over the Palistinian lands, which in the case of the Chacour’s was the most fertile and best land in the area.

No military occupying forces, very little taking of peaceful Palistinian Christian land.

To my mind, the oppressed have become the oppressors. Ain’t popular to say, but I’ll say it.

Posted by Augustine on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 5:45 PM (EDT):

Lisieux,

In both instances, you’re referring to occupation forces, not the people where those forces came from. Again, wanting the Israeli FORCES out and to leave the Palestinians in peace or the Russian FORCES out and leaving the Czech people in peace are quite different things from wanting to rid Palestine of Jews or the Czech Republic of Russians. The latter IS text-book racism, often put in practice as genocide.

Posted by R.C. on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 5:39 PM (EDT):

If I’m not mistaken, Thomas wants all of the Jews, including the 600,000 or so who were there pre-1948, to go “back.”

For those who were there from time immemorial, where would “back” be? Egypt? Ur?

As for the remainder, they fall into four categories:

1. Those who immigrated there;
2. Children born in-country to immigrants;
3. Children born in-country to an immigrant and a pre-48’er; and,
4. Children born in-country to two pre-48’ers.

Actually, you have to account for grandchildren as well. So, including the pre-48’ers themselves, it really boils down to:

1. The pre-48’ers;
2. Immigrants;
3. People born in-country with 0% immigrant blood, descended only from pre-48’ers;
4. People born in-country with 100% immigrant blood, with no pre-48’ers in their ancestry; and,
5. People born in-country with a mix of immigrant and pre-48’er ancestry.

Okay. Even assuming that we sent some portion of these folk “back,” it makes no sense to send “back” group 1; they’d be going “back” to exactly where they are.

Group 2 can be sent “back.” (Actually, they probably can’t, since most of them came from not from Germany or Poland or America, but from Arab countries that’d refuse them any “right of return.” But let’s skip that for now.)

I don’t see how one can rationally send Group 3 anywhere other than where they are. They’re descendants of pre-48’ers.

I suppose Group 4 can be sent “back” to wherever their ancestors came from. If their ancestors came from several places, then I assume they could choose, assuming all those places were willing to honor a “right of return.”

As for Group 5, if you adopt the view that they must go “back” to one of the places their ancestors came from, but they can choose which, then presumably they can elect to remain where they are, since they have pre-48’ers in their ancestry.

Now it seems to me to be pretty good odds that groups 1, 3, and 5, who have a right to stay in Israel and not be viewed as any kind of interloper or carpetbagger, comprise either a small majority or a large plurality of the Israeli population.

Does anyone think that when Thomas envisioned “the Jews” going “back” to where they came from, her rapturous vision includes leaving 30-50% of them right where they are?

I doubt it very much. No, she imagines nearly all the Jews gone: Her vision is one of the Jews reduced to a populace of a size that can easily be overrun and dominated. Two million or more remaining in place is not her cup of tea.

But in that case, she’d have to re-work the rules for whom to send “back.” Perhaps she only wants Group 1 to remain? (They’re elderly and dying off anyway.) But what argument can be made for excluding their children? Were the 600,000 such dhimmis that they had no right to procreate? Is Helen such a jihadist as that?

Or perhaps Helen would allow the children who have 100% pre-48’er blood to remain. But what argument can be made for excluding the children of a pre-48’er who decided to marry a spouse who was born abroad? Does an ounce of foreign blood taint the child? Is Helen such a racist as that?

We should give the benefit of the doubt and assume Helen is neither jihadist nor even a racist. But in that case she must at least permit kids with some amount of pre-48’er blood to remain. What amount? 50%?

Well, in that case we might whittle the size of the required Jewish state down to much smaller proportions than those of today, or even those proposed in the original 1948 border plan. But it would still be big enough to constitute an independent nation.

But Helen Thomas doesn’t seem to want that. She favors a one-state solution. Which requires her “send back” comment, even if it were not based on racist or jihadist intentions, to be implemented, if it ever were implemented, on racist or jihadist principles.

I don’t think she’s a racist or a jihadist, herself. She’s just one more “useful idiot” in the arsenal of those who are. Amazing, isn’t it, how those folks manage an influence out of all proportion to their numbers?

Posted by liseux on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 5:26 PM (EDT):

Augustine said, “Sorry, Jimmy, but it seems that you’re putting the foot in the mouth again. Saying that all descendants of those who immigrated, settled the land, worked on it, should go home IS racism.”

You are incorrect, Augustine, on two points.

1) Many of the Jews that Helen referred to have immigrated, but they have not settled the land, nor have they worked it. A good number of them STOLE the land from the native Palistinian Christians who did immigrate their more than a 500 years ago, and have settled and worked the land. If fact, they just showed up and had the land meted out to them by the Israeli government.

In Bishop Elias Chacour’s book, “Blood Brothers” he writes of seeing the Jewish soldiers come in and take his family’s land they had had for hundreds of years. In the village was a Catholic Church that was razed, along with the village square, and houses. They lied to them that the could come back in a few weeks, but then they destroyed and burned everything.

All this while the Palistinian Christians PEACEABLY let it happen, at least in the beginning.

2)Telling some group to go home is not racism, as Jimmy pointed out quite well. I would have liked the Russians to get the heck out of Czechoslovakia, but it wasn’t that I hated the Russian people, just the occupiers.

You cannot judge Helen’s motives, or you judging her rashly.

Politically correct Americans are SO quick today to accuse anyone of racism.

She should have gone down fighting, but… she is kind of old to fight.

Posted by Pete on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 5:17 PM (EDT):

The real shocker is not what she said but that she, a seasoned professional journalist - that group which seems to be at least ongoing partners in the forging of political correctness - said it in the first place.

Posted by Dave on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 4:52 PM (EDT):

Romanes eunt domus!!!

Posted by Mike in KC, MO on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 4:20 PM (EDT):

Perhaps the best insight into the whole Israel/Palestine thing I’ve read:

It also might be a good idea to give the definition of anti-Semitism because some (for obvious reasons?) insist on sticking to the old definition of anti-Semitism as a purely racial hatred of Jews that sees them as inferior.

This is the definition as it currently stands:

Webster’s Collegiate: Hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic or racial group. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/anti-Semitism

Encarta World English Dictionary: behavior discriminating against Jews: policies, views, or actions that harm or discriminate against Jews. http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?refid=1861586058

Posted by Franciscan on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 2:05 PM (EDT):

Jimmy,
Thank you for your article, you’ve made many good points again. Although I think the first four comments above are good and valid, too.

I’d also suggest that the words “Zionism” and “anti-Zionist” are loaded - so you might want to be careful using them. Helen Thomas never used either term, so I question whether it was wise for you to employ them. At the least, you might want to define them, because most all anti-Semites I’ve encountered hide behind “anti-Zionism”, especially when they’re not addressing their “home crowd” so to speak.

On your previous article, I posted links to the common definition of Zionism:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/Zionism_Is_Not_Racism.html
http://www.zionism-israel.com/zionism_definitions.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=zionism

But there are different aspects of Zionism, historically speaking, that go beyond what most people seem to mean by the word today. And some of it is unacceptable from a Catholic viewpoint (especially the secular, quasi-messianic aspects). And that meaning is what those who hate Israel and/or Jews usually glom onto when ranting against “Zionism” – I assume, because it’s a more useful rhetorical target.

Posted by Augustine on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 1:54 PM (EDT):

BTW, in all your examples you should have said “Greek FORCES, Roman ARMY, American ARMY, German SOLDIERS,” etc. Jews traded and lived along side Greeks and Romans before being invaded militarily, Indians traded and lived along side Americans before being run over by the US Army, Frenchmen traded with Germans before being invaded by Nazis, Palestinians and Jews traded and lived along side before being expelled and corralled by the Israeli forces.

Yet, in these cases, it is still quite different from saying that all invasion forces should go back to where they came from or to let one live in peace, quite another to hate whole nationalities or ethnicity and wish them out, implicitly by violent means. Then, it is RACISM, with genocidal overtones.

Posted by Augustine on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 1:39 PM (EDT):

Sorry, Jimmy, but it seems that you’re putting the foot in the mouth again. Saying that all descendants of those who immigrated, settled the land, worked on it, should go home IS racism. It doesn’t matter whether the one who says so is an Indian, an American, a Jew, an Arab.

Likewise, the descendants whose ancestors used to inhabit a tract of land have no claim on it, even if their ancestors were forced out of it.

Moreover, if either group acts with the intent to expel the other from a conflicted land, either directly or indirectly by making the other’s life miserable, IS racism, often flirting with genocide.

Posted by Andrew on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 1:34 PM (EDT):

Nice one, Jimmy, although I fear the screaming mimis (or is it memes these days?) out there still aren’t going to be satisfied.

Playing a kind of devil’s advocate here, it’s possible for someone to intuit that Helen’s “or America” addition, when discussing where the Jews should go, was made to cover the faux pas she’d just realized she stepped in, and that, given her vehemence on the whole “go home” thing, she doesn’t really mean that she wants them to come to America.

Essentially she first lays out her true feelings, then quickly sees how it’s going to look and tries to cover it up with a bluff by offering “her own backyard” to the Jewish people in Israel. This is made more plausible by the fact that Jews returning to Germany and Poland is a long-standing tenet of actual anti-Semitism (and of course the counter is, many Jews in that area of the world really DID come from Germany and Poland).

I suppose the answer is, we can’t know for certain that she’s engaging in CYA, so she still deserves benefit of doubt.

Thanks for your good work!

Posted by Titus on Thursday, Jun 10, 2010 1:27 PM (EDT):

I might add, as one of the people who made an argument similar to #2 above, that I wasn’t positing a Jewish claim to exclusive control or even legal title to land in Palestine—-simply a right to live there along with other people under some, but not necessarily any particular, social and political arrangement.

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About Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant pastor or seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith. Eventually, he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is a Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to This Rock magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."